Last month, I took part in the Global Game Jam, a challenge where you have a single weekend (48 hrs) to make a game. Game Jams are a great way to practice game-making – because time constraints and sleep deprivation work wonders!

At my particular site, there were about 80 people who came together, splitting up into 4-5 person teams. The theme? “We don’t see things as they are, we see things as we are.” Pretty abstract. I was pulling for ‘particle physics.’ Oh, well.

I had the chance to work with an amazing team, none of whom had met before the weekend. There were 5 of us, and everyone brought some special skills to the team. We had Jennifer Lay doing art; Nick Bergen making the music; John Wolff as designer; and Vinny DaSilva and I doing programming. (See the credits page in the game for a rad picture of us.) We had a lot of laughs, and pulled together a surprisingly good game. (Most game jam games are pretty rough, but ours has a beginning, middle, and an end, and very few bugs. Rad!)

Our game? 14b.

What happened in there?!

The game is a mystery, where you are the detective. Someone’s been murdered, and it’s up to you to figure out who did it. You have some folders of evidence you can look at, witness reports of the scene, and clues that you can ask each of the witnesses about. Each witness sees the scene in a different way, focusing on different details, and bringing their own perspective. And you need them all to figure out the caper.

We’ve posted the game online, so you can go check it out. Who do *you* think committed the crime? Why?

I’ve been hard at work over here on the Gravity Simulator 2.0. But wait — you say — I’ve played with the original. What’s so special about the new version?

Well…

More Colors!

Change the color of the planets. Change the color of the trails!

Less lag!

Here’s a version of the game with 1000 planets on screen at the same time. All pulling on each other. (Don’t see it? Watch it on YouTube)

More Power!

One reason for the speedier performance? The game is running in Unity instead of Flash. And Unity zooms. There will even be downloadable versions of the game for PC/Mac/Linux that will run even faster.

More Options!

Track planets. Collide planets! Vaporize planets with the Death Star! (Eh, not-so-much with that last one)

Where on earth could I go to *play* with this new simulator, you ask? Well, it is still in development, *but* I have posted it online so everyone can play around with it. Right now! If you find bugs or have feedback, you can email me or pop by the forums to let us know.

Last week I finished up the game ‘enough’ to be ready to show off to sponsors. Now, I’ll be the first to say that a game is never really done. (I worked on Velocity Raptor tons after it was released, and still need to add Quark levels to Agent Higgs.) So I’ll still be putting time into Shocktopus. But: for now, it is ready.

And it feels GREAT!

The next step? Try to find a sponsor for the game. Kind of like a publisher who’ll pay to have their name slapped across the side of my game. So until I find one of those, I won’t have any release date. And it could take a few weeks, or a couple months to get a sponsor — so you’ll all have to sit a bit tight as that comes together.

Can’t stand the wait? Go watch the trailer a few more times. Or check out one of the other projects I’m working on. With this project out of the way, there are a lot of cool things I’m working on (three new games at the moment, I believe?) So stay tuned, I’ll write about those upcoming projects soon.